The introduction of web publishing technologies like the WordPress CMS has truly improved web design and web development for anyone wanting a website.
This is terrific news for businesses planning to start a digital presence that is simple and easy to manage.
Prior to blogging and the introduction of powerful and effective content management systems, if you wanted to get a professional site for your business, you normally had to wait until both the website development and web design processes were fully completed. This process could take weeks, even months!
WordPress themes have changed all this. In this blog post, you will learn what themes are, how themes help you and your business save money, and how themes help you easily customize your site.
Web Design Revolution
More businesses today will benefit from a tremendous revolution in web design that began shortly after websites were first introduced. If you own a small business, you may want to learn more about this, because it could save your business a lot of time and money on website development or web design costs.
Let’s review how things used to work in “traditional” website design before WordPress came along:
The first step would be to discuss your requirements with a web development firm or website designer. After that, the actual ”look and feel” of the web site itself had to be discussed and agreed upon. This involved spending time and money with a professional website designer going over design elements of your web site such as the layout, colors, formats, visual elements, content, etc.
Each page of your site then had to be individually created with all of your design elements and codes scripted into the content. All the pages were then assembled into a web site using hyperlinks and navigation menus and uploaded to your server, together with every other file needed to make your site work – script libraries, images, media elements, etc.
(image source:adobe.com)
Only once everything had been tested and was working how it should (and looking how the client had imagined it to look), was the web site considered to have been finished and ready for sign off.
The next step in the evolution of business website design was the introduction of “website templating elements”. Website templates allow the ”look and feel” of the web site to be created separately from content on the page. Having template elements helped make creating web sites faster and resulted in reduced production costs. This also allowed web site developers and designers to service small business clients with smaller budgets …
(image source: www.dreamweaver-templates.org)
As more web site development firms started adopting “template-based” websites, templates were introduced that provided different customization features, such as the option to choose different colours, styles, layouts
As websites and website building tools developed, web templates also started evolving into website templating “systems” that let website owners control the design components of a web site.
Then, a “blogging” tool called WordPress was introduced and helped to start a new digital publishing revolution …
(WordPress – A Content Publishing Revolution)
To learn more about content management systems and the benefits of the WordPress CMS, see the tutorial below:
The WordPress Theme
WordPress themes improve the concept of a web template system one step further.
The WP theme system controls and integrates every aspect of your website design. It lets you add a “skin” over your entire site similarly to what a web template system does but also gives you complete control over the management, appearance and ability to customize your template settings.
As described in the official WordPress site …
A WordPress Theme is a collection of files that work together to produce a graphical interface with an underlying unifying design for a weblog. These files are called template files. A Theme modifies the way the site is displayed, without modifying the underlying software. Themes may include customized template files, image files (*.jpg, *.gif), style sheets (*.css), custom Pages, as well as any necessary code files (*.php).
(source: WordPress.org)
As the above quote states, one of the unique features of a WP theme is that how your site looks to visitors in no way affects the way your content is managed.
In plain English terms, what this means is that you can change the design of your website as much and as often as you like without touching your site’s content and all the work you’ve put into it. For example, if you have configured your site for e-commerce, replacing the theme won’t affect the content or the functionality of the web site. All e-commerce features, plugin settings and product information will remain unaffected, but your site will look completely different.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because when your site is built using WordPress, you no longer have to wait until your website’s design is completed. You can get your website built simply and start with any theme you like, and completely change the look, feel and design of your website in mere minutes, whenever you decide … and as often as you like!
Even better, you can easily install a theme on your WordPress site without requiring web code development skills. Simply pick any WP theme you like, upload it to your site and activate it. WordPress allows you to change your site’s design and customize elements like headers, page layout, styling options and more in a few seconds …
Because WordPress is made available as open source software, web designers anywhere in the world can create themes specifically for the WordPress platform using the WordPress templating system.
This means that loads of great WordPress themes are made available to WordPress users. Themes are normally distributed for Free under the terms of the GNU General Public License Definition, or they can be purchased as Premium (paid) themes.
The WordPress team keeps a FREE directory of WordPress themes which gives WordPress users access thousands of great web templates at no cost …
(WordPress.org – Free Theme Directory)
As the popularity of WordPress increases, more designers are now focusing on developing themes for a wider range of applications.
WordPress themes range from simple-looking, to designs that are spectacular and would easily cost thousands of dollars to create. Surprisingly, most WordPress themes are quite inexpensive.
You can view a number of WP theme galleries containing stunning examples of great premium WP themes here:
(Browse Thousands Of FREE WordPress Themes!)
WordPress Themes – Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of choosing WordPress themes over choosing tools that require traditional website design:
Be Up And Running In No Time
WP themes are really easy to install on your site. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin area and activate. Even easier still, you can install any of the themes listed in the theme directory at WordPress.org) directly from your WP admin’s “Theme” section.
Additionally …
- WordPress has a large online community of commercial theme developers and development companies who make thousands of fantastic WordPress Themes available to users. And many of these themes are 100% free to use!
- Themes give sites a unified and consistent design across all the site’s elements, like pages, headers, footers, layout, etc …
- A “theme” works independently of your site’s content. This means you can swap WP themes as often as you want without disturbing the underlying content of your blog.
- Many themes come with built-in functionality and options that enable you to customize your site’s style, layout and design properties and create a unique look to suit your business.
- Many themes are built using a framework that enables users to upgrade themes to newer theme versions without losing any customizations (e.g. styles)
- WordPress lets you search, upload, install and update WordPress Themes automatically directly from your site’s administration interface.
- Themes helps you save hundreds, even thousands of dollars on website development costs. Free WordPress themes cost nothing and most “Premium”themes are normally very inexpensive.
Responsive Theme Design
Many WordPress theme developers are now creating “responsive” themes.
A responsive theme enables websites to automatically reconfigure the layout to display smoothly across different monitor sizes and screen resolutions, as well as across different devices (e.g. computers, tablets, mobile phones, etc.) …
Responsive themes are also optimized for each device type. Users can scroll, read and load the site on various device browsers without having to readjust their browser settings, or requiring the website owner to have installed additional browser tools.
Note: When selecting, WordPress themes, we recommend choosing a responsive WordPress theme. Not only will the theme ensure that your website will work correctly across your visitors’ devices, it also means that the theme is newer than non-responsive themes and therefore complies with the latest standards and practices of web design.
Hopefully, the above article has provided you with a clearer overview of themes, what themes are, how themes can help you and your business save money, and how themes make customizing websites easy.
In our next blog post in our article WordPress newbies on helping you understand WordPress features, we show you where to find the best themes for your blog.
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"Learning WordPress has been a huge stumbling block for me. I've been looking for something that covers absolutely everything but doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Thank you so much ... you have just provided me with what I have been looking for! Truly appreciated!" - Tanya
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